笨贼偷了“柠檬”掉了苹果

Francis Hsu

Thief steals Lemon, drops Apple
Too flustered while making his escape, a thief lost his iPhone 5 in the process of stealing a shanzhai, or imitated and pirated mobile phone on April 17 near the Zhujiang New Town metro station in Guangzhou. He later called the victim of the crime, asking for the return of his much more expensive phone.
Jin is a junior at South China Normal University. At around 6pm that day, he was listening to music from his mobile phone while walking to entrance B2 of Zhujiang New Town station on his way back to school. The mobile phone was stuffed into a side pocket on his school bag. Suddently, he found that the music had stopped. After a moment of numbness, he realized that his mobile phone had been stolen.
"Thief!" he screamed, rushing out to try to catch the thief, who by that time had run 10 meters away.
Jin didn't give up chasing and almost caught the thief, who was so nervous that he stumbled when climbing a flight of stairs, according to Jin's account of events. Things took a turn toward strangeness when another mobile phone suddenly dropped from the thief's pocket on to the floor.
Jin stopped at once. Astoundingly, he discovered the phone was a barely-used iPhone 5. "I found it very funny. My phone is a "shanzhai" one, less than RMB 1,000. I picked up the real and didn't bother to chase the thief, who was still running."
The thief was too busy making his escape to realize that Jin had already stopped chasing him. After another 30 to 40 meters, he turned around to see Jin standing and staring at him. That's when he noticed his iPhone in the would-be victim's hands. The roles completely reversed, he began to chase Jin back.
Jin took off. Lucky for him, he is a champion 100-meter sprinter. In less than 30 seconds, he managed to evade his tail. "I was surprised he ran slowly like that!" Jin laughed. "Maybe he was a rookie."
Jin tried to call his mobile phone after he arrived home. To his surprise, the thief answered the phone call. Even more shocking, the thief pleaded with Jin to give him back his iPhone in exchange for the phone stolen from Jin. The thief even provided his address.
The thief promised again and again he would return Jin's phone. Jin didn't believe him and asked him to return his phone first. "The thief later told me he had sent it, but he didn't give me the tracking number, and I can't receive it anyway."
After that, Jin was unable to make further contact the thief by his phone number. As for the iPhone 5, he decided to hand it in to the police.
(By Deng Yingxin, Ian Heuer)